G. Willow Wilson

The short synopsis of The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Womans Journey to Love and Islam (Grove Atlantic, $24) goes something like this: Privileged white girl from Boulder and B.U., Arabic script Al Haq tramp stamp on her back, a rebel against her secular parents, who secretly decides during a college health scare to convert to Islam because Christianity isnt sufficiently monotheistic. (You know: the father, the son, the whole confusing trinity ) So she flies to Cairo to teach English after college, falls in love with the first Egyptian man she meets, then converts, marries, and dons a headscarf before telling her mother and father. (Parents, are you ready to cancel that foreign-study check now?) But while the 28-year-old G. Willow Wilson may not be a foreign-policy expert, the part-time Seattle resident makes a virtue of her sincerity. And shes honest about her spiritual yearnings colliding with the hot, dusty reality of often hostile Cairo. She learns when its acceptable to haggle in the souk, the codes of making eye contact in the street, and how to deflect local outrage over uncouth Western tourists (no air-kisses, please). Her book is generous toward all parties, though godless Seattle readers may still be troubled by Islamic attitudes toward women. As Wilson herself notes, with ambivalence, The more cherished a woman is, the more inaccessible she is made. BRIAN MILLER